Platforms use search diversion in order to trade off total consumer traffic for higher revenues derived by exposing consumers to products other than the ones that best fit their preferences. Our analysis yields three key and novel insights regarding search diversion incentives, which have direct...

We consider dynamic competition among platforms in a market with network externalities. A platform that dominated the market in the previous period becomes “focal” in the current period, in that agents play the equilibrium in which they adopt the focal platform whenever such equilibrium...

We analyze a model of imperfect price competition between intermediation service providers. We insist on features that are relevant for informational intermediation via the Internet: the presence of indirect network externalities, the possibility of using the nonexclusive services of several...

We study monopoly and duopoly pricing in a two-sided market with dispersed information about users' preferences. We first show how the dispersion of information introduces idiosyncratic uncertainty about participation rates and how the latter shapes the elasticity of the demands and thereby the...

We study monopolistic and competitive pricing in a two-sided market where agents have incomplete information about the quality of the product provided by each platform. The analysis is carried out within a global-game framework that offers the convenience of equilibrium uniqueness while...